Tag Archives: Astoria Cove

Real estate firm Durst Organization finally has ownership of the last piece of the Hallets Point property puzzle and can now move forward with the 2.5-million-square-foot project.

The company paid $15 million for the parcel of land at 1-02 26th Ave. in Astoria, according to city records. The property is needed for the $1.5 billion Queens waterfront project.

Last year, Durst paid $130 million to take control of the project from Lincoln Equities, according to The Real Deal.

When completed, Hallets Point will have 2,400 market-rate and affordable apartments. Together with the nearby Astoria Cove mega project, the two developments will bring about 4,000 units into the Astoria waterfront.

Queens is at the center of a sweeping plan to create affordable housing unveiled by Mayor Bill de Blasio in his State of the City speech on Tuesday, including a push to create more than 11,000 new homes above the Sunnyside Rail Yard — a project as large as Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Town.

In his second State of the City address, de Blasio reviewed his top accomplishments, including creating full-day pre-kindergarten, doubling the enrollment in after-school programs, and enacting living wage and paid sick leave. There was also a 75-percent reduction in the use of stop-and-frisk by the NYPD.

Looking forward, de Blasio focused on the issue of housing that remains one of the major obstacles to what he described as opportunity inequality.

The mayor, who called the effort to create affordable housing a “profound challenge,” turned repeatedly to Queens as a large part of the answer. He pledged to write new rules, “ones that mandate affordable housing as a condition for development.”

Two of six neighborhoods in the city he has slated for mandatory affordable housing requirements are Long Island City and western Flushing. Each of the four other boroughs will have one such zone. The city will begin work on rezoning these neighborhoods this spring.

“In every major rezoning development, we will require developers to include affordable housing. Not as an option. As a precondition,” he said, citing another Queens project as an example of how the mandate works.

“Want to see this approach in action? Look at Astoria Cove in Queens. As a result of this administration’s framework — and the City Council’s tough negotiations — 465 units of affordable housing will be created at this site alone,” de Blasio said.

“That’s 465 families who no longer have to choose between living in the city they call home, or finding another city they can afford. It means that hundreds of kids will live and learn and grow in our city.”

But de Blasio said his “game changer” for new affordable housing would take place at the Amtrak-owned rail yard in Sunnyside, where he is proposing building above the tracks to make use of the massive swath of land while allowing rail operations to continue.

“Right now, there are 200 acres of land in the heart of Queens, land that exists in the form of a rail yard — and only a rail yard. But the fact is, those tracks could easily exist underground — allowing us to build housing — much of it affordable — above them.

The mayor compared the potential at Sunnyside to other affordable housing built in the past, including Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Town, which has 11,250 apartments. He said Sunnyside should include the same amount of affordable units as the Manhattan complex.

However, according to Patrick O’Brien, chair of Community Board 2, although the goal is admirable, the plan raises some concern because of the lack of infrastructure to support an incoming population. He added the surrounding area would need updates in transportation options, medical services, such as hospitals, and schools.

“Long Island City and western Queens is so densely populated and we’ve gone through and are in the midst of a huge population increase,” O’Brien said. “To have an enormous additional increase on top of a previous increase, that really doesn’t have the full infrastructure support that it needs, is really a matter of concern.”

While de Blasio said he wants to build 80,000 units of affordable housing over the next decade, he insisted that it would not be to the exclusion of market-rate housing. He projects the construction of 160,000 new market-rate units over the same period.

De Blasio said the growing shortage of affordable housing has occurred over more than a decade of housing construction that focused on luxury or market-rate construction. The result, he said, is that 56 percent of New Yorkers are paying more than 30 percent of their salary for rent, up from 46 percent a decade earlier.

“Part of the problem is that the city has for decades let developers write their own rules when it came to building housing. Sometimes projects included affordable housing…but far too often, they did not,” he said. “As the city expanded, our growth was guided primarily by the developers’ bottom lines.”

The mayor also unveiled a stunning proposal to create a new citywide ferry service reaching far flung neighborhoods, particularly the Rockaways, and for expanded express bus service, including a line along Woodhaven Boulevard.

He said that by 2017, residents of neighborhoods like the Rockaways and Astoria, would be able to take a ferry to Manhattan.

“New ferry rides will be priced the same as a MetroCard fare, so ferries will be as affordable to everyday New Yorkers as our subways and buses,” he said. “[S]o residents of the Rockaways and Red Hook and Soundview will now be closer to the opportunities they need.”

The mayor predicted that the new ferry service would also be an economic boon to neighborhoods, spurring new commercial corridors in the outer boroughs.

“We will also expand Bus Rapid Transit — or BRT — serving 400,000 New Yorkers along key thoroughfares like Utica Avenue in Brooklyn and Woodhaven Boulevard in Queens…completing a network of 20 routes over the next four years,” he said.

The new Bus Rapid Transit lines, he said, would cut transit time on existing routes by 15 to 24 percent. “That means New Yorkers spending less time in transit and more time living their lives.”

The mayor insisted that expanding affordable housing could work, and he cited a similar effort by former Mayor Ed Koch.

“But we know now that Koch’s plan was realistic… in fact, it worked,” said de Blasio. “And it had a transcendent impact on our city.“

Photos from the mayor’s speech and of the officials attending the event (By The Queens Courier Staff):

Plans for a mixed-use development that would include apartments and medical offices across the street from the huge Astoria Cove project are progressing. Drawings for the project were provided to The Courier.

Ming & Garden Realty LLC, which owns the land at 26-01 4th Ave. near the Astoria waterfront, filed plans to demolish the current two-story building on the site last July, and then filed in December to construct the tall mixed-use project.

The ground floor and second floor will be used for the medical office, while the third to the 30th floors will include 118 apartments in 122,510 square feet of space, according to veteran Bayside-based architect Tim Hao of HCD Architect, who is designing the building.

Ming & Garden Realty purchased the site in 2012 for nearly $7 million, according to city records.

The site is also several blocks away from the Hallets Point mega project that the Durst Organization is working on.

The growing Queens real estate market will soon have a forum where industry leaders can gather to network and discuss opportunities across the borough.

The premier QNS Real Estate Conference will be held on Feb. 26, 2015, and will feature top real estate firms that are investing in the borough, while welcoming prospective developers, owners, architects and other industry members.

“This event is a great opportunity for the public to learn about the latest trends and investment information in Queens from the top people in our industry,” said Jamie McShane, REBNY senior vice president for communications. “Queens is becoming increasingly important as we have seen projects from Astoria Cove to Hallets Point, and projects at Queens Plaza South and the Long Island City waterfront, as well as Willets Point. And the members of the REBNY are very involved with a growing number of exciting projects in Queens, our largest borough and the most ethnically diverse county in America.”

The event will be at Terrace on the Park at 52-11 111th St. in Flushing at 8 a.m., beginning with breakfast and ending with three panel discussions.

The panel discussions will focus on why big investment firms are coming to Queens, the experiences of major developers already based in the borough and experts’ perspectives on the market in Ridgewood.

“The Queens market has huge opportunity, and this event will shed light on the power of it,” said Josh Schneps, co-publisher of The Courier. “This event is a perfect platform to do so for the industry. We hope people interested in the Queens market will attend and hopefully make investments in the borough.”

The owner of another Astoria waterfront site with potential for a large development could sell the property for four times its last selling price as the neighborhood continues its hot streak.

The property at 30-55 Vernon Blvd., which Eastone 26 Ave LLC bought for $8.2 million last year, is now up for sale again and there have been offers of around $35 million, said Stephen Preuss of real estate firm Massey Knakal,which is marketing the site.

At that price, the property would trade for nearly $230 per buildable square foot, which would rank among the top land prices in Astoria. This would mean that prospective owners would most likely focus on a residential development to cover the purchase price and maximize profits, Preuss said.

Currently, a warehouse and parking lot occupy the 37,116-square-foot site, enough to erect a structure with 140,665 buildable square feet.

If air rights from the adjacent residential properties were purchased or a rezoning occurred, the property could have up to 220,000 buildable square feet, Preuss said.

30-55 Vernon Blvd. Photo courtesy of Scott Bintner/PropertyShark

Preuss imagined the best use for the site would be a mixed-use development with ground-floor retail, an office or event space on the second floor, and condos on the remaining floors.

“This area is quickly emerging, and the site holds immediate value with its waterfront location along with the benefit of several local mega-projects underway,” Preuss said.

The City Council voted overwhelmingly to approve the Astoria Cove mega development on Tuesday, clearing the way for the major land use project.

The project now goes to Mayor Bill de Blasio for his likely approval. He has already praised the project after concessions were made by the developer to boost the amount of affordable housing included. He has five days to either sign or veto the measure.

Now more than 460 units of the 1,723 total apartments throughout the 2.2-million-square-foot project on the Astoria waterfront will be affordable housing.

Developers also agreed to hire union labor for construction and building maintenance jobs associated with the project, and commit to building a ferry dock.

“This agreement shows what we can achieve when the private and public sectors work together,” Astoria Councilman Costa Constantinides said. “This agreement provides real benefits to the neighborhood and will help further link our booming communities along the East River.”

Astoria Cove will consist of five buildings, three on the waterfront ranging from 26 to 32 stories and two on the upland portion of the site, including a six-story residential building.

The project, which is anticipated to take more than 10 years to complete in four different phases, will also include about 84,000 square feet of publicly accessible open space, a school and some retail.

Swain Weiner is president, partner and founder of Greiner-Maltz Investment Properties, which specializes in all types of commercial investment sales throughout the five boroughs and Long Island. Before Greiner-Maltz, Weiner sold more than $215,000,000 in aggregate sales with more than 1,300 residential units. Weiner also serves as vice president of the Astoria Kiwanis, a board member of the Astoria Civic Association and Central Astoria LDC, a member of the LIC Partnership, a board member of Queens Symphony and past president of the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce. He sat down with Real Estate Editor Liam La Guerre to talk about the Queens market.

La Guerre: Right now the Queens market is hot in certain areas. Do you think owners should sell property now before land prices fall?

Weiner: I kind of think we are reaching the top of the cycle now. A lot of properties are even higher than they were pre-2007 when the market was at its strongest point. The question I think owners have to ask themselves is how much more do they think they can make versus how much they can lose if there is a correction. If the loss is greater than the gain, then they should sell.

La Guerre: And many are. But owners of many manufacturing sites and buildings in Queens are selling their properties for huge numbers to residential developers, who are looking to maximize profits. But people have said this is damaging an industry here. What do you think?

Weiner: The problem is those opportunities for business in the United States have left. They are being outmaneuvered by foreign trade. If you rezone those neighborhoods back for factories then there’ll have to be tax incentives as well. And if there isn’t then I think it’s just window dressing. I’m not saying to blow everybody up because of residential development. I think a balance between those two will be totally interesting. But how do you get those guys to stay when you’ve got 10 years left to work and you’re getting money now to walk away from the land? So I think it would be great to keep, but I don’t see how the economics come into play.

La Guerre: What Queens projects are you looking forward to and why?

Weiner: I’m really happy about the Astoria Cove project. I think that’s going to really put Astoria on the map. The other project that I really like a lot is the Willets Point transformation. I think that’s going to be a major help in bringing Corona to a higher level and also to unite Flushing and Corona together. I think that’s going to open up that part of Queens, because Corona has been lagging behind in comparison to Flushing. Then what I think will happen is Jackson Heights will start to feel the overflow and Elmhurst will take some of the overflow and East Elmhurst will feel it also.

La Guerre: But doesn’t the Willets Point project still have lots of opposition?

Weiner: There are some eminent domain issues with it, but the city will work through that stuff.

La Guerre: What is one thing that you would you like to see happen going forward?

Weiner: Generally, people that invest in real estate are kind of juxtaposed to the stock market. At a certain point many people that have owned properties for a number of years, and either their kids don’t want them or they don’t want to deal with it anymore, they would like to see and take the money out. But they can’t because by the time the accountant advises them, they are looking at a 35 percent tax liability and basically all of their hard work is going to the government. So I think if there was a relaxation on some of that, you could possibly see more sales.

Astoria Cove developers delayed the City Council Land Use Committee vote on Wednesday to strike a last minute deal with politicians and win approval for the project.

Based on the agreement, the number of below-market rate housing in the development will increase to 27 percent from 20 percent. About 468 units of the 1,723 total apartments throughout the 2.2 million square foot project on the Astoria waterfront will be deemed affordable.

Developers also agreed to hire union labor for construction and building maintenance jobs associated with the project, and commit to building a ferry dock.

“The agreement will help transform Astoria for the better,” Constantinides said. “For the first time in city history, this developer will be required by law to provide permanently affordable housing that is within the reach of Astorians.”

The project still has to go through a full City Council vote on Nov. 25.

“The modified Astoria Cove proposal is consistent with Queens’ commitment to responsible development and is now closer to par with many of our chief concerns, namely housing, transit options and skilled labor,” Katz said in a statement. “Once built, this project will become a landmark accomplishment that we can be proud of here in the Borough of Queens.”

Astoria Cove will consist of five buildings, three on the waterfront ranging from 26 to 32 stories and two on the upland portion of the site, including a six-story residential building.

The project, which is anticipated to take more than 10 years to complete in four different phases, will also include about 84,000 square feet of publicly accessible open space, a school and some retail.

“The Astoria Cove site developers, Alma Realty, have agreed to use union labor for construction, building maintenance and security on the mega-project, a source told The News. It’s also expected that the developers will agree to increase the number of units of affordable housing in the project.” Read more [The New York Daily News]

“In Queens, a two-bedroom condo at the View at East Coast on the Hunter’s Point waterfront was the borough’s priciest residential sale recorded in October, PropertyShark data showed. The fifth-floor unit at 46-30 Center Boulevard sold for $2.5 million. It features two bathrooms and totals 1,443 square feet.” Read more [The Real Deal]

“The railroad-themed bar/restaurant that is coming to Hunters Point is on track to open next week. Station LIC, located at 10-37 Jackson Avenue, will be opening on Monday, Nov. 17, according to its owners.” Read more [LIC Post]

“Now, permits have been filed for the mega-development, and it’s gotten a bit bigger: 1,789 apartments will now be included across the complex, which takes up two blocks bounded by Jackson Avenue, Orchard Street, Sunnyside Yards, and Queens Boulevard.” Read more [New York YIMBY]

“The City Council and the developers of Astoria Cove have reached a tentative agreement to hire union workers for the construction phase of the Queens waterfront residential and commercial redevelopment project.” Read more [Capital]

“When we stopped by last week, we noticed that little to nothing had changed since QBS’ last visit. ETA on the “six-story, 44-unit mixed-use building with 30,041 square feet of residential space and 6,970 square feet of commercial space” was originally at the end of this year, but obviously the developers won’t reach that goal.” Read more [The Court Square Blog]

“The owners of the Century Development Group Corporation applied for permits to construct a 214,000-square-foot mixed use building at 137-45 Northern Boulevard, the location of a Great Wall Supermarket.” Read more [The Real Deal]

“The disabled, elderly and mostly poor residents of an assisted-living center in Queens spent four miserable months in shelters after Hurricane Sandy, and now they’re getting hammered again — by the federal government.” Read more [The New York Post]

“When Yarin and Talia Katz first came to the United States from Israel, they spent a year sampling various parts of New York City and New Jersey with monthly rentals. In 2011, when they were ready to settle down, Mr. Katz said, ‘We pretty much knew we wanted to move to Roosevelt Island.’” Read more [The New York Times]

“There has been a lot of debate about this 1.7 million square-foot waterfront development. We’ve heard opinions coming from The Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan — but take it from neighbors who live down the street in the NYCHA Astoria Houses, one for the past 61 years and the other for 60 years: This project can help move our community in the right direction.” Read more [The New York Post]

“Cornell University and its conservators faced a lot of challenges rescuing three rare 7-by-50-foot murals from the Goldwater Memorial Hospital on Roosevelt Island. The first challenge was finding two of them.” Read more [New York Times]

“While the Durst Organization was known for developing Manhattan commercial spaces — Seymour Durst once said he “would never buy anything he couldn’t walk to” from his Manhattan office — Mr. Durst has become a residential developer of late, with two Manhattan rental projects nearing completion and negotiations underway to build a massive mixed-use project in Hallets Point, Queens.” Read more [Commercial Observer]

“Main Street Radiology at 72-06 Northern Blvd. opened with limited services on Oct. 6, but has since expanded its offerings — modern ultrasounds, mammograms and stress tests, according to assistant director Todd DiLeonardo.” Read more [DNAinfo]

“An LLC has filed applications to precede construction of a 15-story and 46-room hotel of 34,409 square feet at 41-32 27th Street, in Long Island City; an existing two-story structure was approved for demolition in September, and Arc Architecture + Design Studio is designing.” Read more [New York YIMBY]

“The mixed-use 2.2 million-square-foot megaproject known as Astoria Cove is widely seen as the first test of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s mandatory inclusionary zoning program. The proposal by a consortium of developers led by Alma Realty includes 345 affordable units (or 20 percent of the roughly 1,700 units), a number that affordable housing advocates and elected officials have said is too low.” Read more [The Real Deal]

“It can take a while for some people to get acquainted with the quieter, lower-slung section of Astoria, Queens, called Ditmars by its residents and sometimes referred to as Ditmars-Steinway by real estate agents.” Read more [The New York Times]

Real estate investor and developer Shibber Khan bought a plot of land at 11-12 30th Dr., which has up to 460,000 buildable square feet, for $57 million, according to a published report. Vernon Realty Associates is the seller.

Currently, a one-story warehouse occupied by Bohea Associates sits on the land, but the property can have residential buildings of up to 10 stories, Crain’s reported.

Representatives for the team of developers on the project have boasted that the project is leading the way in affordable housing with a proposed 20 percent or 345 units of the 1,723 dwellings put aside for low-income residents.

But Reynoso, referencing former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s voluntary 80/20 program, in which 20 percent of units in new developments are reserved for affordable housing in return for benefits, told Astoria Cove project representatives, “What you’re doing is not unprecedented in any way, shape or form; 80/20 without subsidies is a joke. That’s the old standard.”

Reynoso also said that the rates for affordable housing units should be adjusted to better fit Astoria residents, which Constantinides has also previously said.

The team of representatives for 2030 Astoria Developers, the group behind the project, couldn’t answer Reynoso’s question about the average income of residents in Community Board 1, who will have preference to the affordable housing units.

“You guys said that you’ve been working with the community for four years, working very closely with the entire community for four years and you can’t tell me how much Astoria residents make in a year,” Reynoso said. “That’s not four years of work.”

Reynoso also asked how the size of the units in the affordable housing sections compare with the size of Astoria families, many of which need two- or three-bedroom apartments. Again, the representatives couldn’t respond.

“When one master-plans the development, especially of this size, one never plans the unit-mix breakdown at this stage,” a representative said at the hearing. “It’s never part of the planning process.”

Reynoso said he will not vote for the project’s current proposal, and said, “There is no chance this is going to move through.”

Numerous affordable housing supporters in the audience waved their hands whenever increasing the ratio of low-income units was mentioned.

Advocates in support of union jobs and residents from other properties of Alma Realty, which is involved in the project, were also at the meeting to speak out against the firm.

Among those speaking in favor of the project was Jack Friedman, the executive director of the Queens Chamber of Commerce.

“The Queens Chamber of Commerce believes this project is and will be a great addition for our borough and for Astoria,” Friedman said. “We wholeheartedly endorse and support the project and the many advantages it will present for the local community for generations to come.”

“As the process moves toward our November vote, we will work with the developer to provide ample affordable housing, good jobs both during and after the construction process, and dramatically increase public transportation options on and off of the peninsula,” he said.